Narrowband or broadband networks include a number of infrastructure elements for facilitating communications between communication devices. An example of such a narrowband network is a network used by a Project 25 (P25)-compatible two-way Push-To-Talk voice communication system that includes wireless and wired voice communication devices. An example of a broadband network is a wireless data network that operates in accordance with the Long Term Evolution (LTE) signaling standard and that includes wireless and wired communication devices. The communication devices may be, for example, portable narrowband two-way radios, mobile radios, dispatch consoles, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), laptops, two-way radios, cell phones or other similar voice and/or data communication devices that communicate with one another via wired and/or wireless networks. Each network can span one or more logical jurisdictions, wherein a jurisdiction is defined by a geographic boundary that includes one or more cells or as defined by geo-coordinates or mapping coordinates, for instance. Each cell represents a geographic coverage area that provides network resources, also termed herein as bearers, for carrying data for wireless devices connected to the network.
As used herein, the term bearer or bearer resource may be a transmission path in a wireless network and is used to carry wireless device data traffic. A bearer may also be a set of network resources (wireless and/or over the wired network) that are allocated for delivery of traffic towards one or more devices in a given network. A bearer can be bidirectional, i.e., having both an uplink path and a downlink path; unidirectional, i.e., having either an uplink path or a downlink path; point-to-multipoint (PTM) (for example a multicast or broadcast bearer associated with one or more devices); or point-to-point (PTP) (for example, a dedicated bearer or a default bearer in an LTE network associated with a single device). A bearer is associated with a set of characteristics or attributes including, but not limited to, Quality of Service (QoS), a carrier frequency at which data is modulated, a particular bandwidth, and/or bit rate.
A public safety system may include one or more autonomous narrowband or broadband networks. Each network has a set of network resources that may be allocated to an emergency event (also referred to herein as an incident), such as a fire or a burglary. During an incident in a specific jurisdiction, incoming emergency calls related to the incident are routed to a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system associated with the jurisdiction where the incident occurred. The CAD associated with the jurisdiction where the incident occurred (referred to herein as the local CAD) identifies non-network resources (for example, emergency personnel such as firefighters and/or police and/or emergency equipment such as trucks or ambulances) that are needed for responding to the incident. The local CAD uses at least one predefined criterion, for example the incident type, to calculate a priority for the incident. Communication devices associated with or used by the identified non-network resources are assigned the incident priority and the communication devices use local network resources to respond to the incident.
While identifying non-network resources for the incident, the local CAD may determine that there are insufficient non-network resource(s) (resource gap) within the local jurisdiction to adequately respond to the incident. Subsequent to identifying the resource gap, the local CAD may determine that another CAD (a remote CAD) has the non-network resource(s) necessary to fill the resource gap. The remote CAD may be in a network that covers a different jurisdiction. In order to adequately provide all the non-network resource(s) required for responding to the incident, the local CAD may request “mutual aid” resource(s), i.e., the non-network resource(s) required for filling the resource gap, from the remote CAD. The local CAD and the remote CAD communicate with one or more policy charging and rules functions (PCRF) that assign priority to communication devices associated with or used by all non-network resources (mutual aid and local) needed to adequately respond to the incident. It should be noted that the local CAD and the remote CAD may communicate with the same PCRF or different PCRFs. When the local CAD and remote CAD are in two different jurisdictions, the PCRF may be unable to correlate communication devices associated with or used by all non-network resources from the remote jurisdiction with the incident type and incident priority from the local jurisdiction. Therefore, the PCRF may be unable to assign the appropriate incident priority to the mutual aid resource(s) and to the local resources identified for the incident.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for exchanging signals related to mutual aid resource requirements between autonomous networks in order to assign an appropriate priority to a mutual aid resource.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.